Tag: Cooking — Desserts

With leftover almond flour in my fridge from the wonderful Chocolate Orange Tart, I have had the opportunity to experiment with new almond flour-based recipes.  A recent attempt focused on the deceptively simple Almond Flour Shortbread Cookies, the dough for which can be made while your oven is pre-heating.

These cookies were sweet, but not sugary at all.  They were very lightly flavored from the almond flour and had the texture of a soft butter cookie, rather than a crisper traditional shortbread.  

I ended up baking the cookies for longer than the recipe time – about 14 – 15 minutes over 8 – 10 minutes – because of how long it was taking for the cookies to lightly brown. In hindsight, I think 13 minutes would have been enough.

These cookies ultimately didn't wow me, but I think they would be good to serve with an assortment of other cookies during a tea time or when I am looking for some sort of easy weeknight or afterthought of a dinner party dessert.

For a child's birthday party recently, I decided to bake simple, partly improvised cookies.  My target eaters were the party's adults who I thought would be more attracted to the multiple, deep cinnamon flavors of the cookies than the children.  Instead, these cookies were not only all devoured by young children, but I also received multiple recipe queries from them as well!

In hindsight, cinnamon-infused snickerdoodles are a childhood favorite, so I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised.  In any case, their reaction means that these simple cookies will be a feature at future child-attended events.

The substitutions that I made to the recipe were: used butter exclusively instead of a butter / shortening mixture, substituted Vietnamese cinnamon for regular cinnamon, and added in cinnamon chips (from King Arthur Flour), which I eyeballed when mixing into the dough.

I formed cookies that were slightly larger than the recipe called for because I ended up with 17 dough balls instead of 22 – 24.

Correspondingly, I baked for these cookies for 14 – 15 minutes to accommodate their larger size.  The cookies burst with deep cinnamon flavors, and the texture was otherwise a standard, thin oatmeal chewy cookie.  I look forward to wowing children again with these!

With a recent King Arthur Flour online order, I reached the point that so many of us do of needing to add one more item to my cart to get free shipping.  Just a few dollars to avoid a much higher shipping fee.  I decided to try something different, so I added a box of cake flour to my cart. 

I've actually bought cake flour in the past, but it's always expired before I've had the chance to use it.  So fresh cake flour entering my apartment, what to do, what to use it in during its prime?

As you can tell from the above image, I didn't end up looking too far – just as far as the back of the box.  And what an endorsement of box recipes this cake ended up being.  It really was the simplest, lightest, fluffiest, and most delicious chocolate cake (ok, maybe not the most delicious, but felt like among the best light cakes I've made in some time).

And the best part?  The cake was a cinch to prepare – mix together dry ingredients, then wet, and then mix together.  No special instruments needed.  In fact, when I re-made the cake today, I used a simple spoon to do all of the mixing.  I also ended up not brewing coffee for the recipe, instead using 1.5 teaspoons of the KAF instant espresso powder mixed with water in the wet ingredients.  The extra dark color comes from Hersey's Special Dark Cocoa, which is a mix of dutched and non-dutched cocoa.

After about 33 minutes or so, this cake (1/2 of the recipe, baked in one 9-inch round cake pan) was done.  After several more minutes of cooling, it was ready to eat!  I really liked not only its light texture, but also the lightness of the chocolate flavor.  It was just slightly bitter, not too sweet, and was made complete with the addition of some vanilla gelato.

It's not often that I make pies or cakes that can truly be served year-round.  Most have a distinctly summer (think berry or light cream) set of ingredients, or distinctly winter flavors (gingerbread or other spice cakes).  

Enter the Milk Street Chocolate-Orange Tart.  While the orange-chocolate flavor combination does seem to create more of a winter, holiday-time feeling, the base for this tart is actually ricotta, which makes it a creamy and lighter treat.  

The partial almond flour crust also adds a lightness of flavor to the tart, with the orange and chocolate also coming through as accents rather than the primary feature of this delicate dessert.

The best part of this tart?  It's relatively simple to prepare, at least compared to most pies that require far more chilling and prep time for the dough.

To construct this crumbly tart, you simply combine the ingredients in the food processor, press into the tart pan, and then chill once before blind baking (no multiple chills needed to prevent the butter from getting too warm).

After the blind baking is complete (approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes for me), mix together the tart ingredients in the same food processor, pour into the warm crust, and then bake.  I think I overbaked the tart at 33 minutes, but it was still very good with a smooth consistency.

I look forward to making this simple tart again and again!

I continue to bake my way through Claire Ptak's Violet Bakery Cookbook with the Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies being another delicious stand-out that I will be baking again and again.

These cookies are crisp on the outside, slightly softer in the middle, full of a delicious salt flavor, and super, super buttery.  I really loved these cookies, and so did the others who sampled them.

You start with your standard cookie approach – creaming together the wet ingredients, and then adding in the sifted dry ingredients.  For my chocolate chips, I used a hodgepodge of leftover chocolate bits in my pantry – mini-chips, chunks of bittersweet bars, and some regular, semi-sweet chips as well.

The recipe then calls for scooping the dough with an ice cream scoop, which I did, but I think my scoop was not quite the size of Ptak's, so I ended up with approx. double the number of cookie doughs than the recipe intended.

Then you freeze the cookies for a bit before baking them.  I ended up baking my first tray of cookies the day I made the dough, and the second batch later in the week.

These cookies were super simple to bake, and turned out wonderfully even though I think I over-baked them.  I look forward to making these again and again!

Milk Street, Milk Street, how did I cook before you?  Chris Kimball's global recipe guide continues to outperform with my most recent Milk Street attempt, the Boterkoek, a Dutch shortbread cookie-like butter cake.  

This beautiful cake / cookie is baked in a springform pan and uses just 7 ingredients – with eggs being the main distinguishing ingredient from traditional shortbread.  The cake is very lightly flavored by a bit of lemon zest, making it a simple treat that can be enjoyed at virtually any time of the day and at any time of the year.  The thickness and crumbliness of the cake makes it feel like a more winter-y, tea-time snack, but the lemon flavor gives it a summer-like refreshing flavor.  In short, bake it all day, every day!

You start by buttering and flouring a springform pan, before making two separate egg mixtures (one white, the other white + yolk).

Then cream together the butter / sugar / lemon zest, followed by adding in the egg yolk mixture and the flour to make a thick, cookie-like dough.

Spread the dough in the prepared pan, and then coat lightly with the egg white wash before making the scored, checkered pattern with a fork.

I baked the cake for 28 minutes, and ended up with a cake that cut like a thick cookie, was crumbly like a cookie, but still held itself largely together.  The cake was a hit with both adults and children alike, so I will definitely be making it again!

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Violet, home of innovative American-baker-in-London Claire Ptak.   While Claire may be best known for making the wedding cake for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, she is also well-known in baking circles for her seasonal baking.  Having tried her delicious molasses cake – scented with citrus – in the flesh a few weeks ago, I can agree that Ptak's baked goods are really something!

I have to admit though that I wasn't that hard to win over because I had already tried one of Claire Ptak treats – albeit of the homemade variety.  My re-creation of her Chocolate Rye Brownies were a fudgy, fudgy treat – dense, gooey and slightly salty from my first use of Maldon sea salt flakes.  

The thick batter whipped up pretty quickly, particularly because I melted the butter and chocolate together in the microwave, instead of on the stovetop.  Somewhat annoyingly though, the batter prep process required three separate bowls so wasn't the shortest baking-to-clean-kitchen brownie recipe I've made.  

I then baked the brownies for 20 minutes, the lower end of the recipe baking time.  I took the brownies out of the oven at that point, fearful of overbaking, because the middle no longer seemed wobbly, which the recipe stated was the desired bake end.  When the brownies cooled though, they did seem a bit under-baked so I think closer to 25 minutes may be the best next way to approach these.

I do think these are great "adult" brownies – caramel-y and bold.  They will be made for an office potluck or party in the future!